Browsing by Subject "Entrepreneurial strategy"

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Serial entrepreneurship of technology ventures
(2020-05-14) Lee, Sae Young; Henderson, Andrew Duane; Graebner, Melissa E.; Bermiss, Sekou; Ranganathan, Ramkumar; Anderson, Edward G
In this dissertation, I examine differences between ventures of serial and novice founders with respect to important strategic decisions faced by new technology ventures. Specifically, I develop hypotheses about serial founders’ experience-based responses leading to their ventures’ entry into attractive markets, collaboration with external partners for the development of technology, and formation of diverse founding teams. Building on research linking founder experience and venture outcomes, I conceptualize prior venture founding experience as an upstream, enabling mechanism driving several of the strategy-performance relationships outlined in the literature. Further, I investigate the performance advantage of serial founders by jointly exploring the effects of venture capital firm partners and ventures’ location in commercial hubs. I test predictions using a dataset of 459 new ventures in the U.S. medical device industry, and find support for the serial effect on the three strategic decisions. Findings suggest that ventures of serial founders tend to have more diverse founding teams and are more likely to engage in external collaboration efforts to develop their technology. Results also suggest that ventures of serial founders are more likely than those of novices to enter more attractive market segments, which in turn contributes to the increased likelihood of their success. Contrary to expectations, boundary-spanning collaboration and founding team diversity are not found to translate to venture performance. Whereas ventures of novice founders appear to benefit significantly from partnerships with highly reputable venture capital firms, ventures of serial founders do not, especially when the serial founders received venture capital funding in their previous ventures. I discuss how the findings extend the literature, outline the limitations of the study, and conclude with suggestions for future research.